The Valiant

  “How did you manage to get the proportions so accurate?” I asked.

  “Ah, yes, well, I asked Cai for his help.” The slave master cleared his throat. “He made a best guess, I suppose.”

  I remembered the sensation of Cai’s hands traveling over the lines of my body and felt my face flush with heat.

  Charon was good enough to pretend not to notice. He turned back to the box and withdrew a battle kilt made of bronze-studded leather straps. “Here. It goes with this.”

  I hesitated, regarding him suspiciously.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Charon took the armor back from me and laid it gently in the box. He closed the lid and, after a long moment of silence, slid the box toward me with a sigh. “I traveled with Caesar’s legions when he invaded Britannia,” Charon said quietly. “To assess the slave prospects.”

  I felt myself grow very still as he spoke.

  “Sorcha. I saw her for the first time in Caesar’s camp, in his tent. And I loved her the moment my eyes met hers. I still do.” He held up a hand. “And nothing ever came of it. Nothing ever will. I came to terms with that a long time ago, Fallon.”

  “She never even tried to come home,” I blurted out, the old hurt surfacing like a toothache. “She could have at least sent word.”

  “To what end?” Charon said gently. “Your sister Sorcha is no more. And Achillea belongs to Caesar, who will never let her go. She’s far too valuable to him. How would the torment of knowing that his daughter was alive be any kinder to you and your father than letting you both think she was dead?”

  My head spun. All I could picture in my mind was my heartbroken father sitting night after night in front of the banked embers of the fire in his hearth, drinking slowly from a great mug of ale late into the night, his gaze roaming the shadows of his hall as if seeking her out. All I could think of was that he’d made the decision to marry me off to Aeddan because he didn’t want to lose me like he’d lost her.

  I looked at Charon and saw that his dark gaze was also clouded with memory.

  “My love for Sorcha is an old, scarred-over wound on my heart, the ache dulled by the passage of time. Finding you ripped that wound open again. I knew there was something about you from the first moment.” He shook his head. “Then I found your sword, and seeing Sorcha’s mark on the blade confirmed it. By then it was too late to let you go, so I decided that the best thing I could do was bring you here, to her.”

  “And sell me to my own sister for enormous sums of money.”

  “I might be a romantic.” Charon grinned wryly. “But I’m also a businessman.”

  “Does Sorcha know how you feel?” I asked. “Does she know you’re in love with her?”

  “She didn’t. Not at first.” He looked at me, and his gaze sharpened noticeably. “Not until I tried to buy her slave contract from Caesar.”

  “You don’t know my sister very well,” I said. “She could never love someone who owned her like livestock.”

  “No, and that’s why I love her. But you misunderstand me, Fallon. I could never own Sorcha,” Charon said. “The moment her contract was in my hands, I would have torn it to pieces.”

  “You would have?” I frowned at the slave master in confusion.

  “Of course I would have.” He snorted. “And so would Caius Varro.”

  Up until that very moment, the legalities of Roman contracts had been a bit lost on me. I suppose I’d never even considered that a contract, once it was written into existence, could simply be torn and made worthless by whoever held the paper.

  Charon shook his head. “I’m assuming Caius made an offer to buy your contract? Don’t tell me you actually think Caius wanted to own you.”

  “I . . .”

  But that was exactly what I had thought.

  Cai . . .

  I blinked hard, remembering the anguish in Cai’s face as he’d begged me to let him buy my contract. I hadn’t understood what he intended to do with it. And he hadn’t understood why I wouldn’t let him grant my freedom. Instead, we had let our tempers get the best of us, never bothering to figure out the true meaning of our words.

  I rose to my feet. I needed to find Cai and explain.

  Charon stopped me before I could leave.

  “One more thing . . .”

  He reached into the leather scrip that hung from his belt and handed me a small vellum scroll, sealed with a blob of black wax.

  The wax seal was imprinted with a sigil of some kind. I glanced at it and then back up at him.

  “I can’t read this,” I said.

  “I know.” He smiled and pressed the scroll back toward me. “That’s not for you to read.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s for you to keep. As payment for a kindness done.” Charon chuckled at the expression on my face. “You’ve made me a lot of money, Fallon, and not just on your own sale. The price your sister paid for you will serve to goad others on to pay similarly for my wares in the future. It’s all in the perception of things. You’ve guaranteed me money I wouldn’t have made had you not helped me rescue the trunk that bore your own sword. That was the proof of your identity and the only reason I made that kind of profit on your sale. I’m not blind to the irony of the situation.”

  He ran his hand over the lid of the box of armor.

  “Once outside the walls of the ludus, you won’t be safe. Cai will do his best to look after you, but the ways of Rome—and Romans—are still foreign to you. And you, Fallon, being you, will draw attention—not all of it benign. You’ll need to be careful, and you’ll need to curb your—what should I call it—your impulsive nature.

  “That scroll,” he continued, “is for you to use only if you happen to find yourself in a bad situation with no avenue of escape.”

  I plucked at the edge of the scroll’s black wax blob with a fingernail.

  “Leave it sealed,” Charon said, reaching to cover my hand with his.

  “What is it?” I asked, frowning. “Some kind of magic?”

  He laughed a little. “Of a sort, I suppose. It’s a promise.”

  “Of what?”

  “Money.”

  I felt my mouth twist in a sour grimace. “Does it always have to come back to that?” I asked.

  “It’s the kind of magic that appeals to most Romans.” He squeezed my hand once and let go. “Keep this safe and hidden, and keep it with you at all times when you leave the grounds of the ludus. And if you ever find yourself in need—dire need, mind—give that scroll to whoever it is that threatens you. Unless they hold the wealth of Caesar himself in their hands, I promise this will save you from almost any peril. It guarantees substantial payment upon the safe delivery of your person to my house.”

  I sat there, stunned by the generosity of his gifts. Charon was a man who bought and sold souls. And yet his own soul was a slave to the love he had for my sister. I thought again about Cai’s offer to buy my contract. Charon seemed to almost sense what I was thinking. He reached out and tapped a finger on the iron ring I still wore around my neck.

  “When I put this on you, Fallon, I never meant for it to be permanent.”

  The slave master stood and nodded a bow to me. Then he turned and left me sitting there in Sorcha’s garden, wondering about the invisible armor—and shackles—that love could bind around a heart.

  • • •

  When I returned to my cell after the evening meal, I noticed that someone had been in my room. It would have been hard not to notice. The familiar shadows dancing on the bare stone walls looked wrong. They were thick and tinged with crimson. I squinted through the gloom and sucked in a sharp breath when I saw my oath lamp. In my absence, the brightly colored panes had turned black, reducing the flame within to a muted, reddish gleam. For a moment, I wondered if the Huntress Moon had transformed the delicat
e glass meadow bird into one of the Morrigan’s battle ravens. It perched there at my window, waiting for me, belly full of the wandering fires of dead souls—

  Stop it. The Morrigan is your ally, not your enemy.

  I strode across the room, lifting the guttering lamp down. This was no magical transformation. Someone had rubbed the thing with a coating of the sticky black pine tar we used on the chariot horses’ hooves—I could smell the pungent tang of it as soon as I picked up the lamp. Another prank.

  Or a threat. Or a warning . . .

  As I turned with the lamp in my hand, the lurid glow it cast revealed that the wall above my bed was covered in dripping black scrawls—words and pictures—calling me a Roman lover. At least, that’s what I politely interpreted as their meaning. I couldn’t read the words, but the images were plain enough. The threat was clear—someone at the ludus knew about me and Cai. I had to be more careful. If Sorcha found out there was actually something between us, she might very well bar me from the arena. That, in itself, was worrying enough.

  But then I saw the bird. Arching above the vile pictures was a crudely rendered raven. With wide black wings and a huge, sharp beak frozen open in a silent shriek.

  Definitely a warning.

  I lit the wick of an old tallow candle and blew out the flame in the defiled lamp. Turning my back on the wall, I sat down on the edge of my bed and began, painstakingly, to clean away the soot-black stains from the oath lamp with a strip of linen. As I worked, I whispered a prayer of thanks to the Morrigan that I’d had the foresight to take the box of Charon’s armor directly to the quartermaster to be stowed along with my swords in one of the caravan wagons. I hated to imagine what might have happened had I left it in my room. I would need my gear in pristine condition.

  Because now, more than ever, I was determined to make my mark on the circuit. They thought they could frighten me with pictures painted in tar upon my walls? The pictures I drew would be in the sands of the arena, rendered in my rivals’ blood. And the letters I carved with my sword? They would spell out Victory.

  XXIV

  CHARON’S WELCOME GIFT of armor marked me as a contender and went a long way toward convincing the crowd I was worthy to be in that arena. But ultimately, my reputation—such as it was to become—was sealed with the outcome of my very first circuit bout. The bout that would forever brand me as the Fury Killer.

  • • •

  The Ludus Achillea’s traveling train had set out early through the gates of the compound, and there was an almost festival atmosphere as the girls and our handlers set off down the road, heading northeast into the Umbrian countryside. Our first performance venue on the circuit was in the town of Perusia. As the sun set, we made camp outside the walls of the town. We would sleep that night in tents kept under guard by our escort, Decurion Caius Varro and a dozen or so of his men.

  As the stars began to flicker to life in the darkening sky above us, I spotted Cai near Sorcha’s tent speaking to his men. He turned, suddenly, as if he’d sensed me watching him. I felt a wave of heat wash over me as he stared at me across the distance. Even though the veils of smoke and sparks from the campfires, I thought I saw a raw longing in his gaze. There must have been something like that in mine too, but then I remembered the ugly pictures and words scrawled over my room: Roman lover. I quickly tore my eyes away.

  I heard Elka chuckling.

  “Little fox,” she said, “you escaped from a cage once already. And love, the old crones of my tribe would tell you, forges cage bars stronger than iron. Maybe don’t push your luck, ja?”

  Love? No. Oh no.

  I tried to tell her she was being ridiculous. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. Elka shook her head and clapped me on the shoulder before retiring to our tent for the night. I should have followed. I was tired, and most of the other girls were already chasing sleep. I watched Elka go and turned back to where Cai still stood staring at me.

  We hadn’t spoken since the infirmary, since I’d cracked Cai’s rib and—perhaps even more painful to him, if Charon was to be believed—rejected his offer to buy my contract for a second time. I thought of Mael and how I’d pushed him away so that I could chase glory in my father’s war band. I didn’t want to repeat that terrible mistake, not with Caius Varro.

  In the distance, I could hear the muted whine and ring of metal grinding on stone. Beyond the boundary of our camp, the ludus weapons masters had set up a tent and would be busy, deep into the night, cleaning and sharpening swords and spears in preparation for the next day. The sound was a lullaby for a gladiatrix, but I was wide awake. I stood and threaded my way between the glowing circles of the fire pits.

  “Decurion,” I said quietly when I reached him. “May I ask you to accompany me outside the camp?”

  Cai stepped away from his fellow soldiers, his gaze questioning. But he nodded. “Of course, gladiatrix.”

  We walked silently, side by side, to the camp entrance, where a ludus guard straightened at our approach and nodded respectfully first to Cai, then to me.

  “I need to pay a visit to the weapons tent,” I said to him. “I’ll be brief.”

  He glanced at Cai and then moved aside. The dew-wet grass brushed my bare calves as I walked the short distance to the entrance of the tent. The canvas walls glowed golden from the fire within, and I could smell the tang of metal and wood wafting on the night breeze.

  “Oro,” I greeted the master smith. “I beg a favor.”

  He straightened up from the freshly sharpened spear blade he was attaching to a wooden shaft and grunted a query at me. A genius with metal, he hoarded his words like gold. I lifted a hand to the iron slave collar that circled my neck.

  “Please,” I said, an unexpected knot in my throat. “Take this off.”

  Oro’s eyes gleamed in the firelight, and he muttered something behind his singed beard that might have been “About bloody time.”

  He went to fetch his tools, and Cai stepped up behind me, gently gathering my hair off my shoulders and lifting it out of the smith’s way as he worked. I held my breath, and it was over in an instant. The bolt holding the ring together fell away, and Oro pried the ends of the iron open, sliding it from around my neck.

  I let my breath out in a gasp and took the collar when he offered it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He waved us away, turning back to the spear he’d been working on. I pushed the tent flap aside, and Cai and I stepped back out into the darkness. The stars overhead seemed brighter somehow.

  “Take it,” I said, holding the collar out to Cai.

  He wrapped his long fingers around the broken iron circle and looked at me, uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Consider it a promise,” I said, wrapping my hand around his. “I understand now why you wanted to buy my contract.”

  He shook his head. “I never wanted to own you, Fallon. Only free you—”

  “I know,” I interrupted. I needed to explain how I felt in a way that I’d never truly been able to with Mael. “But don’t you see? That’s not real freedom—not for a Cantii warrior. There will come a day, Caius Varro—I promise you—when I will be able to buy my own contract. On that day, if you’ll wait for me, I’ll come to you, and we can be together as equals.”

  I smiled up at him and saw in his eyes that he finally understood.

  “I’ll wait for you, Fallon,” he said, slipping my iron ring into the leather scrip hanging from his belt. “Forever, if I have to. Although I’d rather not wait quite that long, if it’s all right with you.”

  I laughed and was astonished at how good it felt to do that without iron around my throat. I lifted a hand to my neck and felt the circle of calluses left behind, like a phantom collar. Cai reached up and ran his fingertips along my skin, and I shivered at his touch.

  “The marks will fade,” he whispered.

 
I nodded as his hand shifted to slide into my hair, and he brought his face down to mine and kissed me. The kiss thrilled through me all the way to my toes. I wanted to draw him down into the long grass and wrap his arms around me, but I didn’t dare. We were so close to the camp, and even kissing him in that moment was a risk I couldn’t afford to take.

  With a reluctant sigh, I pulled away. At the same time, Cai seemed to remember himself and stepped back as well, but I could hear his breathing over the clang of Oro’s hammer, and his eyes were large and dark in his face.

  As he walked me back to the camp, I saw a familiar figure standing at the entry. My sister, her arms crossed and her brow knitted in an angry frown.

  “Decurion,” she said.

  “Lady.” Cai lifted his chin, and for a moment I almost thought he was going to salute. “This gladiatrix needed her equipment tended.”

  I choked, and Sorcha’s left eyebrow arched sharply.

  “What I meant was—”

  Sorcha put up a hand. “Thank you, Decurion. I’ll take it from here.”

  Cai nodded and strode off toward the legionnaires’ tent, leaving me to my sister’s mercy. As soon as he was gone, Sorcha rounded on me. I steeled myself for a tongue-lashing, but she paused when she saw my newly bare neck.

  “It was Charon’s suggestion,” I said. “He seemed to think my armor would fit me better without it.”

  “I see.” Her expression softened into a smile. “Well, Charon is nothing if not insightful. Go. Get some rest, Fallon. You’ll need it.”

  If I thought she would have let me, I might have hugged her in that moment. But I contented myself with a shared smile and went to find my tent. For the first time since that collar had been hammered around my neck, I slept through the night without dreaming of escape.

  • • •

  When morning came, the crowds of the sleepy little town of Perusia were out in full force, filling the stands of the arena and spilling out into the marketplace beyond. The smell of roasting meat wafted on the breeze, and children raced through the crowds like bounding rabbits.